July 27 Biotech Update

The market looks bad and it is bringing down the sector although I think BIIB has done a pretty good job at reversing some bullish biotech sentiment. That being said the sector might be outperforming the broader market a little as there was a nice big deal announced this morning. When all is said and […]

June 10 Biotech Update

This is sort of a different start to the day with the market off to a good start but biotechs the obvious laggard. The sector had been one of the relative bright spots but now that the market is recovering, they are lagging. This seems more news related (discussed below) and we need to see […]

February 10

Who order gains and losses with a large side of chop? This is a market clearly looking for direction and positive signs one day turn into negative signs the next. A stock that you expect to be an early tell of market sentiment ends up just being another victim of the chop. Markets like this […]

December 23 Biotech Update

The sector is certainly having problems. As I noted yesterday, you should be biased towards raising cash (and going short if you are interested in running more of a market neutral book). Even ABBV who is the hep-C “winner” cannot catch a bid as the market is reasonably discounting not the fact that ABBV will […]

November 5 Biotech Update

The markets seem to be in consolidation mode or to put it another way it is trying to make up its mind about the next move. At this point I am 50/50 on the next move as it really seems to be in no man’s land. The longer we stay at these levels the better […]

October 29 Biotech Update

A little bit of consolidation in the sector, which seems perfectly healthy especially with the GILD “miss.” The broader markets are presenting a positive/neutral backdrop and I think that eventually leads to the sector playing catch up and then taking the lead. I still think we need to keep an eye on small caps as […]

October 17 Biotech Update

Looks like we are clearly having the bounce that everyone has been expecting (expect during the height of the selling where everyone expected the market to go to zero). This should have fairly significant legs even if it is a dead cat bounce. At this point the conservative stance is to stay agnostic about the […]

August 5 Biotech Update

It was an interesting morning in the market. The broader market was down but biotechs seemed to hold up pretty well but oddly it seemed like it was the small caps that did better. This is interesting because it is the large caps that tend to outperform as a flight to safety (if you can […]

July 30 Biotech Update

The sector and market rallied nicely on the GDP but I am still not convinced that we have an all clear. It was especially disconcerting how quickly the market gave back a lot of the post GDP print gains. Of course, there are still values out there and no reason to sell and run for […]

June 5 Biotech Update

The market looks like it is teetering on the edge and perhaps it is the ISIS march across northern Iraq that will be the impetus to send it into the correction. What is interesting is that the biotech sector has held up well in this market weakness (although the weakness has been relatively minor at […]

April 30 Biotech Update

It is not Tuesday so the selling continues. It seems like the turnaround Tuesdays happen but have no sticking power. At some point that trend will change and that should be an important tell. Whether that happens today or in a couple of months is not clear at this time but as long as the […]

January 29- Biotech Update

Would you believe another snow day in Louisiana, which is number three in the past couple of weeks (if you were counting). In general, despite a very weak market , biotechs did fairly well, although it was the large caps holding up the sector with the small caps more mixed. It was nice to see […]

August 6- EOD

Another quiet day on the biotech news front, where the only real news of interest was the REGN earnings. The REGN miss and weak market not surprisingly led to a rather broad based weakness in biotech. Outside of that there is really nothing significant to talk about but the news can pick up over the […]

June 24- EOD

There was a lot that happened last week that I will slowly get to go through it the next week but on a big picture macro front, I actually think this is going to end up generating some nice values for long term investors. When biotechs get hit in the macro mess it is not […]

AEGR – Quick commentary on Aegerion

Aegerion has been one of the best performing stocks over the past 6-12 months. This has been driven by the value creation of Juxtapid (lomitapide), a small molecule microsomal triglyceride transfer protein inhibitor, was approved by the FDA and EMA adjunct to a low-fat diet and other lipid-lowering treatments, including LDL apheresis where available, in […]

June 6- EOD

Perhaps we had a turnaround Thursday but could of course all be crushed by a bad jobs report (or perhaps a good jobs report- you never know in this market). 1. There is some additional CELG news that has not been getting a lot of attention. As way of background, CELG 2017 guidance has about […]

May 29- EOD

It seemed like a nice selloff in biotech today. There were the occasional winners (INFI) but for the most part it was a sea of red today. The summer months can be difficult times for biotechs but they have been quite resilient and these sell-offs have ended up being good buying opportunities. 1. I want […]